![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
In Europe and North America, an increasing proportion of individuals who are referred to de-radicalization programmes, arrested for terrorism offences, or involved in politically motivated violence, present a ‘mixed, unclear, and unstable' (MUU) ideological profile instead of holding a single, clear and coherent extremist belief system. Where do these composite and often inconsistent ideological constructs come from? This paper offers a direct attempt to conceptualize and empirically expose the sources and drivers of the MUU phenomenon, using an in-depth case-study tracing the emergence of MUU ideological constructs from the incelosphere. Based on a theoretical model that acknowledges the interplay of structural-, societal-, and individual-level drivers, we argue that the MUU phenomenon results from (sometimes strategic) individual uses of a specific technological affordance – outlinking – and that these fluctuate in response to significant external events such as the Covid-19 lockdown. Our findings enhance our understanding of recent cases of extremist violence and unlock new targeted avenues for CVE intervention.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Channel is a “multi-agency approach to identify and support individuals at risk of being drawn into terrorism” and is part of the UK’s counter-radicalisation programme known as Prevent. See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/channel-and-prevent-multi-agency-panel-pmap-guidance.
2 The incelosphere is the constellation of online spaces – forums, subreddits, blogs, etc – that contain incel content.
3 By drivers we understand facilitating factors, sustaining mechanisms, or underlying structures.
4 Ted Kaczynski’s thought, for instance, can be seen as an instance of an MUU ideology. While, all ideologies evolve and involve a certain amount of ideational importations and cross-influence, the MUU phenomenon, can be understood as a significant intensification of this tendency, making it a scientifically distinct phenomenon. As Gartenstein-Ross et al. (Citation2023) recently stated, while “it could be argued that nothing new is occurring, and that this is merely an old phenomenon gaining new attention […] there are nearly three times as many cases in our dataset between 2017 and 2022 than between 2010 and 2016. We believe it is likely that a real change is occurring”.
5 Beyond ideological effects, the internet has many other roles in facilitating extremism and terrorism, such as attack planning and behaviour (see Gill et al., Citation2017) and the establishment of virtual ties leading to lone-actor actions (see Zeman, Břeň, & Urban, Citation2017; Bouhana, Citation2019).
6 According to Boyd (Citation2010) the four key high-level dynamics enabled by social media networks are persistence, replicability, scalability, and searchability; these affordances help to shape the engagement of users in these environments.
7 UK Law enforcement now refers to these individuals as “self-initiated terrorists” (S-ITs). . See UK National Counter-Terrorism Security Office (2021): https://www.protectuk.police.uk/threat-risk/threat-analysis/self-initiated-terrorists-s-its#:~:text=A%20S%2DIT%20is%20defined,or%20ideology%20of%20a%20group%E2%80%9D.
8 User behaviour of from the chan boards of 4chan.org/R9K and 9chan.tx/leftcel were not included in the individual-level social network analysis due to these platforms being anonymous image board sites whereby all posts are under the username “Anonymous”, thus rendering this data unsuitable for network analysis.
9 First, in line with typical incel discussions “science” and “psychology” websites feature prominently, reflecting incels’ inspiration in folk evolutionary psychology and their claim to be “high IQ” and endorse facts rather than ideology, as well as outlinks to online spaces hosting suicide content (with associated advice). Secondly, news sites are regularly linked to, which is standard in many extremist ecosystems that set the agenda through the exclusive filtering of news stories that contribute to their narrative.
10 This algorithm iteratively classifies n observations into k distinct groups to find optimal groupings that minimise intra-group variance while maximising inter-group variance (Hartigan, Citation1975; Jenks, Citation1977; Rey, Stephens, & Laura, Citation2017).